Family Drama; Autobiography; Young Adult Literature
Parrot in the Oven has some serious drama afoot. And most of this drama revolves around family—the Hernandez bunch can be pretty crazy sometimes, and that makes family drama a major genre for this tale. Plus, when you're a teenager in a big family like Manny's and your parents fight all the time and your siblings can be the worst, well, things get personal in this family super quick.
So we get to hear about all the ups and downs of Manny's family life, plus we get it all from his own perspective, which is pretty cool. But what makes this up-close-and-personal tale even cooler is that the author, Martinez, used his own life as inspiration for a lot of this book. And that means this tale dabbles in the autobiography genre. Of course, the story isn't an exact replica of Martinez's life, so it's more of a shout-out to autobiography than autobiography proper.
And when you have a book about a high school kid who's going through tons of struggles, it's a good guess that it's geared toward the young adults in the world. Because Parrot in the Oven is part of the young adult genre, this tale focuses on all the struggles of growing up as a teenager. But just because it's young adult lit doesn't mean adults can't hop on Manny's bandwagon, too, so grab your grandma and start a book club already.